Little Boy Blue
by Cairnsy
Summary: Sometimes, isolation is by choice. And sometimes, it’s forced on you by something as simple as the colour of your hair. Pre-01 Yamato angst.


Sometimes, isolation is by choice. And sometimes, it's forced on you by something as simple as the colour of your hair. Pre-01 Yamato angst. 

Author's notes: Yamato's 01 attitude and standoffish nature is usually put down **solely** to his parents divorce. I wanted to attack his personality from a slightly different angle ^_^. 'Gaijin', by the way, is often an insult, and basically translates to someone of non-Japanese parentage. 

**Little Boy Blue.**

His father never speaks of her. 

Yamato can't decide if that makes matters better or worse. 

There are no photos, no memories. Nothing of her but him, and the legacy in gold that she left behind. 

_"But, Miss! I don't want to sit next to him!" _

"That can't be his real hair colour, can it?" 

"Gaijin." 

It's a legacy that is closer in value to brass. 

He doesn't like the questions that they ask him, pity vying with disgust. They never want to know him, not with his pale skin and gaijin-eyes, and his hair, always his hair, but they want to know where it all comes from. 

_"Isn't his mother French?" _

"No, that was his father's second wife. Well, second if he ever married Yamato's mother in the first place." 

"Japanese women are obviously not good enough for the mighty Hiroshi." 

Never. Yamato will never tell them. How could he possibly, when he doesn't know himself? Was she American, British? Perhaps she was partly Japanese as well, and knew what it was like to be called names that he couldn't always quite understand. 

Perhaps she knew what it was like to eat lunch alone, each day. The sushi rolls are the same, it is the hands closer to ivory than grey that taints them so they are unable to share the same table as the others. 

Perhaps she had found it all too much, and had gone back to England. Canada. Australia. 

_"He doesn't even know where she is from!" _

"Ha! I bet he doesn't even know her name!" 

"If he doesn't know about his mother, then how can he even know who he is?" 

He doesn't even know who he is. 

Who is he? 

Who _is_ he? 

He is lost. Without a definition, he is merely half formed. Yamato Ishida: part Japanese, part incomplete. 

If it were only his heritage that was so, then the problem would not be quite what it is. But it seems that his soul is interwoven tightly into the very blond strands that ostracise him from his classmates, and each pained tug, every barb, cuts further than the superficial. Words can make a man fall. They can also cause ice to rise. 

Winter has always been Yamato's favourite season. 

_"I can't believe his hair got *lighter* over summer break!" _

"No-one else's hair changes colour." 

"Weirdo." 

"Geek." 

"Buotoko." 

Buotoko. Very ugly boy. Always different, always unnatural. Even when he spends most of summer inside, shielding away from the sports everyone else plays in the July heat, the sun still seems to find a way to sneak into the furthest corners of his room, bleaching further that which is already too pale. 

The sun. His greatest tormentor. 

Buotoko. 

_"He's too pretty to be a boy!" _

"No Japanese boy looks like a *girl*." 

Maybe he looks like his mother. He certainly resembles very little his father. 

_"Maybe Yam-"_

Father is his. HIS. He doesn't even allow the voices in his head to try and convince him otherwise, not on this topic, not this time. 

Father is all that he has, now that T.K and his mother are gone. 

_"It's hard to decide which one is the slut, Matty-boy's mother OR father." _

"You mean we actually have to choose?" 

But his father is Japanese, wonderfully Japanese. It is rare for them to blame Father, not when it is more appropriate to feel pity for the poor man who has such an unwanted child. Yamato likes to pretend that his father loves him despite his ugly blond hair and strange eyes that scare many of the girls in his class. He likes to pretend that the reason his father works late is because he simply has to, and not because he tries to put off having to come home and deal with his horrible, non-Japanese _gaijin_ son. 

He likes to pretend. 

Pretend. 

All the pretence in the world can't keep him from feeling as though he is the third wheel in a family that already only consists of two. 

_"He's been abandoned by two mothers now!" _

"Not even a white woman wants him as a son." 

"Then how can his father?" 

Little boy blue, with only a harmonica as a companion. The instrument is his outlet, the one thing that doesn't seem to dislike him for something he can't control. He needs it, craves to hold it always in his hands. He despises it, wishes he could crush it beneath his feet. 

It is only an instrument. It is his only friend. 

He would rather have one that actually talked. 

_"He doesn't even try to mix with the rest of us." _

"That's because Yama's too good for us, aren't you, blondie?" 

"Man, he's playing that stupid harmonica again." 

He finds it easier to make it seem that he's the one not interested in them, these days. A cold glare, a refusal to rise to their 'banter'. 

They don't like being ignored. 

Well, neither does he. 

He finds it almost … strange that they actually respect him more when he decides to have nothing to do with them. Not that their tongues are curbed as a result, although it appears there is something 'cool' about someone who simply doesn't care. 

He wishes that he didn't care. Then perhaps he wouldn't feel as though he was drowning in the hardening ice that was slowly consuming him. 

Yamato's beginning to wonder when he stopped simply liking winter and started becoming it. 


End file.
